742 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



labor on nursery work, but Governor Dix was the lirst man to come forward 

 and actually work out the plan on a scale of any size and put it into practice. 



At Comstock, Washington county, a new state's prison is being built. 

 When completed, it will accommodate 1,500 prisoners and be one of the best 

 equipped prisons in the United States. At present it holds about 400. It is 

 situated only half a mile from the D. & H. R. R. and the Champlain Canal. 

 There is much fertile land in the present tract, water is abundant and the 

 nearness to the Adirondacks, combined with the transportation facilities, makes 

 this an ideal place to start the first prison nursery. This fall ten acres have 

 been turned under to form the transplant nursery for the spring of 1912. At 

 such an institution labor is tig-ured at nothing. What will it mean to furnish 

 transplants, formerly costing |5 to |7 at from |2 to $3 or less, and seedlings 

 for practically nothing, aside from the shipping charges? 



So much for the planters' end. How about the prison end? In the last 

 few years there has been a very strong movement to get away from mediaeval 

 customs still clinging to our prison systems. The movement is gaining mo- 

 mentum very rapidly and primarily it aims to get the prisoner out of the 

 barred cell and place him under more congenial surroundings. Would not a 

 prison nursery be a great step in this direction, getting the unfortunate in- 

 mates out in the sun and air, where he would lose his prison pallor and be 

 more healthy and happy. The most intensive methods used in nursery work 

 today could be multiplied and carried out to the extreme, thus insuring the 

 finest kind of nursery stock. 



There are of course drawbacks to this system. In the spring when the 

 trees are taken up and new ones are transplanted, a large gang of men is 

 necessary and prison officials are taking great risks if they allow, say, 300 

 men to work in a field together. This could be alleviated to a great extent 

 by not having the nursery in a single unit, but at a large institution, having 

 several tracts of from five to ten acres, scattered about the usually large area 

 held in connection with such institutions. Again, the class of labor em- 

 ployed here is extremely poor. Warden Homer, of the Comstock prison, figures 

 that the eflSciency of prison labor is not more than half that of paid labor. 

 Here the personality of the warden would play a most important part, one 

 warden getting twice as much labor from the same body of men as another. 

 This factor of inefficiency would not affect the ultimate result to speak of, but 

 would be felt mostly in the size of nurseries and productiveness. 



Next spring the nurseries of New York State will turn out 6,000,000 trees. 

 If the experiment at Comstock is a success, and there is no reason why it 

 should not be, this number should be increased many times within a few 

 years. A great deal about conservation is heard nowadays, not only forest 

 conservation, but conservation of all kinds, in order that a rich heritage shall 

 be left for the coming generation. The j)oor unfortunates who are in penal 

 institutions have conserved nothing, not even their moral and mental faculties. 

 Here is a way, then, that they can, in part, pay off their debts to our succeeding 

 generations, and in so doing be vastly the better off for it themselves and to 

 society in general. 



